with Mark Taylor

Month: March 2018

Sometimes it is difficult for our human minds to understand why God chooses to do things that we would have hoped He would have done differently. There are some people who are no longer in our lives that we miss greatly and would have hoped that they still were, but things and times bring changes.

We don’t always like it but God may know something more about the situation and knew changes needed to be made. We have all lost loved ones that have left a vacuum it seems, at times, in our hearts. But God really does control our very first and last breath.

This world was never meant to be a comfortable place for it is not supposed to be our home. God sets in every life appointed times for growth and changes. But ultimately it is up to us if we are going to accept this and trust God’s greater knowledge or try to operate on our own limited one.

It does bring pain when God has to involve His different plans from ours at times. But God makes all of His decisions according to eternity’s purposes. Life can never be just about us. It has to be about others as well. Our happiness here is not nearly as important as our happiness for eternity.

The Bible is right when it says God’s ways are not like mankind’s ways. God sees far beyond what we ever think we know, and we must trust Him if we are to have peace in any matter we ever will face.

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All of us experience the heaviness that we feel from the pressures of daily life, some days a lot more than others. The demands of life not only can be, but will be, burdensome at times. We can feel pretty overwhelmed.

It’s obvious that many people are under pressure. You can see it in their face, even feel it as you hear them talk. This world’s gadgets of technology have not helped as the advertisements they produce say they do. It’s just increased the busyness of people and taken their attention in too many directions.

But you can find rest in the midst of all that is demanding and occupying your mind. There is only one place where you can find freedom from all the pressures of work, bills, other’s needs and anything else. The only true freedom in this world is a life that lets God take care of you- for He does say that He cares about and wants to help you carry your heavy daily load. In fact, He will carry most of the load if you’ll choose to let Him. He always wants to help, and it’s always up to you to let Him.

The cares and constant demands of this world are much too great to ever give us real freedom. God alone, the true God who made heaven and earth, who created you, in fact, has a much better plan to help you than you realize. Let Him, and you’ll find peace in your life. It comes through a life with God’s Son, Jesus. Reach out for His hand to help you, and He will.

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Harvest time is when the grains, fruits, vegetables, grasses, nuts and a few other things become ripe. The time to bring these foods in is crucial or some of these foods could be lost. With different types of foods, the harvest time has only a window, and it always depends on the place. For instance, corn only has a maximum time of maybe three to four weeks at the most. Hay may be the same. Vegetables may have three or four days. Something like a wheat harvest, going across the land, might start in late May in the south and finish by early August in the north.

Regardless, harvest time is limited time. The Bible speaks of harvest in several places. (The book of Revelation, Genesis, Job, Matthew and many others.) A great missionary, Hudson Taylor, during the end of his time here on earth, told that God had given him a great insight that there would be a war with Japan and Russia (and there was) and one last great revival soon after in Western Europe (and there was – the great Wales revival), and then Hudson said the next event soon to follow would be the return of Christ.

And now here we are. As the Bible says in John 4:35; “Wake up and look around. The fields are ripe for harvest.” Right now God is positioning people for the harvest. This one will be only for a short time. Maybe just a few weeks. And then Jesus will come to take them home.

Prepare yourself. Be ready. Now let God place you to the edge of the harvest fields where He is going to use laborers who will bring in this final harvest of souls for this age. Get your life in order and be prepared. Everything is set. Make sure you are.

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You’ll find that many times when people are willing to depart with something they believe is of value, it isn’t always that valuable to them. But when it does cost the one giving, there is a deeper price in the value.

In 1 Chronicles 21 you’ll find the story of how King David, even though God had given him victory after victory over his enemies, decided to number the people of the Lord just so he could see how many fighting warriors he had. But God wasn’t pleased about this. God had always taken care of David’s armies, large or small, and this act by the king showed that he was trying to rely on his own strength instead of trusting God for strength to win battles.

Because of this God brought judgment on the land. You know that the punishments of the sins of leaders are most of the time felt by those they lead. And the result here was that 70,000 people died. Yet at one point David was instructed to build an altar of sacrifice and repent to God to stop the plague.

Someone offered David the place and resources but David refused saying, “I will not present an offering to God that costs me nothing.” The altar was bought and established and the plague was lifted.

I look out today and see people’s lives, especially Christians, who live unsatisfied, unholy and defeated lives all because they try to give God offerings of their lives that are cheap and cost them nothing. They’ve never surrendered much of anything unless they really didn’t want it or gave minimally when they could have done better.

The life-changing work of the gospel is free to those who will receive Jesus as Savior, but there is a deeper cost to serving Him than many want to pay.

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We’ve all made mistakes. That’s what people sometimes do in this life and some of us, like me, made many more than they should have. Mistakes bring pain many times, and we may have to live with the results of some of those mistakes.

If we are not careful, the mistakes can control our future much more than we should allow them to do, and this can hinder us from becoming more of what God wants us to be.

I, as do some of you, grieve over things I’ve done and am responsible for, but all I can do now is place them before God and ask Him to forgive me as I repent and then work through those areas as God knows how I should.

Sometimes you can go back and say “I’m sorry,” and other times you can’t. But remember that God can always fix, in His ways, what it looks like we’ve destroyed by our past mistakes.

God forgives, and we must accept this. People don’t always, and we must accept that as well. I don’t deserve to be able to serve God like this except by His grace, giving me another chance to serve His purposes- and the very same goes for you.

So don’t let your past determine your future. Let God lead you into the future He has for your life.

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Recently again, we have seen and heard of the great calamity of death by the hands of deranged people, whose minds are not their own. People taking innocent lives, yet the talking heads distort the story of how there needs to be more safeguards in public places and with guns. But they don’t talk about the real issue.

Satan is behind every evil plan. He does not have the authority himself to kill, but God has given mankind a choice, and Satan will enter men when they turn from God. And by this, Satan can have a person who, if he gets enough control, can do his bidding and take out people who are made in the image of God- Who Satan hates.

This whole problem is spiritual. Mental illness, or any other name you want to give it, is nothing more than spiritual oppression of the human soul. You can try to take away every gun in the country, and it still will not change the fact that because of sin and its source, Satan, there is going to be these things happening.

It is no wonder with all the occult-type shows on television and murder-type video games. The world and Satan’s employees are on a different level and set this all up. Evil is sin, sin destroys, and Satan is behind it all. And until these issues are dealt with from the spiritual side, they will be the newsmakers of these days. Until people turn to God through Jesus, who is the only solution, the blame falls to those who aren’t being light to dark places.

And the solution to it all is Jesus, who has the ultimate power to put a stop to it through His people, if they will step up and be His people.

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Many a nation or tribe has written up a document that says there is to be peace if we all abide by certain rules. Sometimes this works well for years. Other times it doesn’t last but only a few months.

But today I want you to think about a different kind of peace treaty that you yourself may have made and not even realized it. I’m convinced that many good churchgoing people have been caught having a peace treaty with the devil and not even realize what they have done.

You see, when church people only go to church but do very little besides that, they are not being Kingdom-minded for God’s purposes. There is a lot more to the Christian life than just going to church. In fact, if someone just goes to church and never does any good for God’s Kingdom in their lifetime, I would probably guess they’re only religious and not Christian at all.

It’s not by what we say, it is much more by what we do that says who we are. When we basically do little according to God’s standards, we’re not experiencing real life the way God has planned, which is always on the offensive and attacking the works of darkness to overcome them with the light that God can bring to us and others.

When people do little-to-nothing for God, it’s like they’ve signed a peace treaty with Satan so he won’t bother them if they don’t bother him too much. Be careful and examine your life. Make sure you’ve not allowed yourself to be at peace with the enemy’s ways by being passive about sin.

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1 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

2 A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

3 A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

4 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

5 A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

6 A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

7 A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

8 A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

When God set the universe into motion, it was no accident. The whole idea that what we know as human life and the universe that man lives in; beginning with a huge explosion is just ludicrous.

In the creation of all that is made by God, which is everything in the universe, God did it in increments of time.

A Pastor of mine that helped to launch me into ministry used to say it this way; “Reggie, this thing was not done in a corner.”

Literally, when God made the heavens and the earth, he had a plan and timing, each phase was done in timelines of God’s days. IT WAS NOT A BIG BANG OR ACCIDENT, it was all planned and executed in God’s time.

My friend, everything that God does is in perfect time to his plan for each human being and all of nature.

You remember when He told the Isrealites that they would be in Babylon for 70 years and that nothing that they or anyone else could do would change that waiting time.

He told them that “when 70 years were accomplished he would visit them.”

When God begin to speak to the Prophets concerning the coming of the Messiah, he gave them specific details on the events that would take place before the Messiah’s arrival.

The Apostle Paul tells us this in Galatians 4:4-5

4 But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law,

5 To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.

The key words are these, “when the fullness of time was come.”

Jesus would not ascend into this universe or this world until God said so. NOTHING WOULD CAUSE HIM TO BE HERE ONE DAY, ONE MONTH, YEAR OR DECADE PRIOR TO GOD’S TIME.

It was God who caused the seasons to change as they do. He set the solar system into place so that the world would remain in balance.

As sure as the sun will cause the earth to warm as the earth turns on its axis and the flowers and grass begin to show life…

And the heat of the summer will cause the fruit trees to bring forth and the vegetation will begin to produce…

And then fall will cause the leaves to turn and drop to the earth just before the earth cools from the ice and snow…

My friend, you can be assured that God’s time and seasons will not be interrupted.

But this is the most important thing that you should know, that if God can keep this universe in balance, then He has control of your life.

Listen to what the Psalmist says in Psalms 8:3-9;

3 When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;

4 What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?

5 For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.

6 Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet:

7 All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field;

8 The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas.

9 O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!

Can you see and understand that God cares about you and that he has a plan for your life?

If you and I could just be patient and let God do what He desires to do with us, if we can just know that He has a time and purpose for everything event that happens in our lives.

In “due season” or in His time, He will cause every plan for us to happen and nothing that anyone can do will be able to stop God’s plan for us.

Phillipians 1:6 tell us;

6 Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ:

1 Thessalonians 5:24

24 Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it.

Just like when God spoke the heavens and earth into existence according to his time…

And he allowed Israel a set time in Babylon…

And just as his time was fulfilled to send His only begotten son into the world, my friend, GOD HAS A PERFECT PLAN FOR YOURS AND MY LIFE!

What we must do is remain faithful to Him, His plan, His calling and “in due season” He will cause it all to happen for His purpose and glory.

Christians are called stewards because they’ve been entrusted with the gospel. It is this responsibility for which believers will be held accountable.

Life treats us all differently, but death treats us all the same.

God will allow those to suffer in proportion to their unfaithfulness to Him, for the unbeliever as well as the believer as Christians are unfaithful to God here on earth will cost them heavenly privileges.

The same mercy we show to others on earth, we will be shown when life is over.

Most people are after the bread of this world that is here today and gone tomorrow and is making many spiritually sick.

God doesn’t demand perfection. He only requires obedience.

God is looking for people who will just believe.

The instructions you follow determine the future you create.

You can’t get to where you should be by taking your own roads

Your decisions determine who you are and will be.

We make our choices and then our choices turn around and make us.

God picks all men and women to be great, some greater than others and all for His purpose. To be great for God you must be willing to serve wherever your designated areas are. What truly make you great is that you followed God’s way, not yours.

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The book of Joshua speaks a lot about people conquering and being given the land to inherit from God. There were many battles to be fought and standards set to keep the land, cities and regions intact.

There is a place in Joshua 17 where one of the tribes comes to the main leader, Joshua, and the elders and asks for more, going along the lines that they deserve more because of who they are. The reply is: if you need more, go out and do the work to get it.

This brings to mind how today many that attend church- or are a Christian or think they are a Christian- who believe that God owes them something. Just because we made a decision to follow Christ as Lord and Savior in one’s life doesn’t mean you don’t have to really do much of anything else.

One’s Christian life is full of duties we have and responsibilities to God and our fellow man. And we don’t get to do it as we think is best, but we are to be about Gods business as He says we should.

There are far too many church people that think because they are church people they get special treatment- instead of seeing things from the standpoint that we owe our lives to Jesus Christ and to follow His example and the work of the Bible. God owes us nothing except His covenant promises and we owe Him everything to keep them.